Archive for the 'Site News' Category

You might be wondering, what ever happened to the Feminist Coffee Hour Podcast? Well, it hasn’t gone away. In fact we have three episodes in post production, and plans to record many more. However life has gotten hectic – me with a new baby and Karen’s career is getting exciting. We just don’t have the time we used to. But we really want to keep making this show. So we decided to hire an editor to help us with the podcast. She’s doing great work and we can afford to pay her. We see it as the cost of participating in a project we love. But we always said if things ever started to cost over a certain amount, we’d put more effort into monetization. So we made a Patreon. If you want to support our show, here’s where you can do it. The Feminist Coffee Hour Podcast on Patreon.

So as you may have heard, my husband and I welcomed a son last week. I am so happy that we are doing well and slowly getting the hang of this new phase in our lives. I do intend to keep blogging and podcasting, and there’s a few things I have to say about this process which I’ve been kicking around in my head for many months. I still want to write about politics and pop culture but I have a new lens with which to view the world that I want to explore. I hope you will indulge me!

In January 2016, Political Flavors will be five years old. And while the blog part of the site will continue hopefully for a very long time, I am proud to announce that Political Flavors will also be home to a new project – The Feminist Coffee Hour Podcast.

My friend Karen and I will be hosting a show that we hope will have a similar tone as this blog. We will discuss pop culture, politics and current events from a feminist perspective. Episodes will be posted on the blog and also on the podcast website which will be politicalflavors.com/podcast. We plan to have episodes hosted on iTunes very soon. We have many big ideas and high hopes for this endeavor including insightful guests and collaborations with other podcasters.

Beginning this project has been a very exciting time for me. I’m a fan of the medium and this show is truly a labor of love. I have been listening to podcasts since Air America archives were made available when the radio network launched in 2004. Even before that I always loved radio. Growing up I appreciated baseball sportscasting almost as much as the sport itself. As a kid, John Sterling and Michel Kay might as well have been Don Mattingly and Wade Boggs. In junior high school I was obsessed with morning zoo radio shows. (There’s no accounting for taste when you are 12.) And then at 13 I discovered late night radio talk shows, which may have stunted my growth with the hours of sleep I lost. Podcasts got me through homesickness in grad school and entertain me during my commute and distract me at the gym today. They’re one of my favorite things.

Karen and I have been talking about feminism and other topics that we are passionate about since we met in 2012. I have been playing around with the idea of starting a podcast for years, and anytime I meet anyone interesting I ask them to write a guest post for the blog. One day last month after I made yet another request for her to write about a cool idea she had, Karen said “Instead of a guest post, let’s do a podcast.” And I said “Yes!” And thus, Feminist Coffee Hour was born.

Last Week, Fox Sports published a piece entitle “13 Ways to Keep Your Husband Happy.” And it has inspired my friends and I to take the piss out of it. Here’s our series of commentary on this inspirational piece of journalism:

Happy New Year everyone! Here are some of my favorite things about 2013.

Favorite Book – Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman. In 1889 two women writers raced around the world to see if they could beat the fictional record from the famous Jules Verne novel. This is an amazing story and Goodman writes this non-fiction book like a novel. I feel like I have a grasp on what New York and other cities felt like in the late 1800’s and although a lot is different now, in many ways the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I read Around the World in Eighty Days before I read this book so I could understand the inspiration for the trip. Like Gulliver’s Travels, many people think this is a children’s story. But it’s mainly an homage to British Imperialism. Jules Verne is to H G Wells what Stephanie Meyer is to J K Rowling.

Verne was terrible at writing women, something that is actually addressed in Eighty Days. Bly gets to meet him on her travels and Verne’s wife says she thinks his books need more women characters. And although it seems redemptive that two women took on the challenge of Verne’s male heroes, unfortunately Bly and Bisland still had many of the same racist attitudes as Verne did.

Still this book is a fascinating read. Every page is better than the one before it. And send these quotes to anyone who tries to justify something sexist by making an appeal to tradition. Bly and Bisland quite frequently expressed feminist sentiments.

“After the period of sex-attraction has passed, women have no power in America.” -Elizabeth Bisland

“A free American girl can accommodate herself to circumstances without the aid of a man.” -Nellie Bly

“Criticize the style of my hat or my gown, I can change them, but spare my nose, it was born on me.” -Nellie Bly

New TV Show – Maron I don’t watch a lot of television these days, but I do really like Marc Maron’s show in IFC. The show brings to life all of Maron’s delicious and sardonic humor.

Video Game – Fiz: The Brewery Management Game This game is similar to the classic Lemonade Stand or newer Facebook games in that you are running a shop and have various aspects of products and personnel to manage. But it is so much more than that. There is a storyline that I got wrapped up with and very clever dialogue and plot twists. I played it through in a week, which took me about 22 hours total. Good thing I’m on vacation, it’s hard to put this game down once you start it.

The Unitarian Universalism subreddit on Reddit has been sadly neglected. There are often very interesting discussions, but content is sparse and legitimate links and discussions were often caught in the spam filter, never to see the light of day. I asked the moderator if I could help out and was added immediately. Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to ask for it!

I’m currently on an Amtrak train heading towards Washington DC for the Women in Secularism 2 conference sponsored by the Center For Inquiry.

Although I don’t describe myself as an atheist, there’s a lot of overlap in the speakers an panels with topics I’m interested in: feminism, a critical view of religion, politics- especially with regards to the separation if church and state. Many of my favorite bloggers and twitter friends will be there too!

I’ll be tweeting and blogging as I can. You can also follow along on the #WISCFI hash tag. If you are going, let me know if you want to meet up!